


in the haze we see colours

by IrisCandy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Banshee Powers, Beating, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Other Characters Are Mentioned, Panic Attacks, Slow Burn, Trepanation, but I won't tag them because they're irrelevant for this particular thingy, eichen house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5937151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisCandy/pseuds/IrisCandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some selfish part of her wanted to take him with her, wherever she was going. There was a very unique kind of fear that gripped her heart when she imagined herself in a world without Stiles on the other end of a phone or a door or a near-death experience. There was an emptiness in his absence that she dared not explore. </p><p>But he couldn’t come with her this time, to where her body was taking her. </p><p>(In which the death of Lydia Martin isn't a prospect Stiles can take, and Lydia knows it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the haze we see colours

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: this work contains mentions of panic attacks and anxiety, and also a bit of violence.
> 
> This particular fic takes place after the events of 5x15 and explores the reparation of Stiles and Lydia's relationship, which we haven't delved into a lot lately on the show.
> 
> I have plenty more ideas swimming around in my head for this particular story, but I don't want to make any promises and I really wanted to get this chunk out to the world, so this is it, for now! Your feedback is extremely important to me as well, so feel free to comment!! <3 
> 
> Without further ado, enjoy the angst. 
> 
> (Fic title from 5AM by Amber Run.)

_L Y D I A._

_I._

Lydia had the suspicion for a long time that the banshee in her was never born from Peter Hale’s bite, but was just lying dormant in her all along.

The truth was that most of Lydia’s childhood was quite thoroughly suppressed in her mind. She’d get glimpses at times – when Jackson would yell, crowding her face, baring his teeth and peering at her with hateful eyes, she’d get a cold ache knotting through her stomach that had travelled through time from her sleepless nights as a girl, when she would lie in bed and listen to her parents’ harsh words flying between one another for hours.

Naturally, she had also suppressed the dreams in which people who had been long dead would relay stories to her that wouldn’t really unfold until the next day, after she’d woken up. She’d buried memories of night terrors in which she could _swear_ she’d been killed by people she’d never known, by diving off buildings she’d never visited or crashing in cars she’d never owned. She’d forgotten moments of strange, eerie clarity that would wash over her in the middle of a second grade classroom, going numb as she felt the loss of collective mourners after a tragedy that she’d later hear about that night on the news. She smothered memories of sleepwalking and blackouts and loss of time she could never explain to anyone.

The problem with Lydia’s genius was that no therapist was ever smart enough for her, even back then. She’d seen child psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, social workers and the like, and knew more about their practice than they could have expected of her, during pre-pubescence especially.

Needless to say, the professional’s technique was not nearly as effective when Lydia knew the remediation behind them. She was too keen, too quick, too full of knowledge for her own good. Not to mention, Lydia couldn’t explain her otherworldly experiences to herself, never mind to a stranger with a clipboard and a weary smile.  

Lydia loved her mother, but she wasn’t afraid to admit that she was very quick to give up. When something didn’t work the way she hoped, she took the easy way out, and she would quit. She’d let problems fester until they went away, which didn’t backfire as often as Lydia would have thought.

She herself was the perfect example of that. When a younger, more fiery-haired and fashion-challenged Lydia Martin couldn’t connect with a single professional, her mother simply gave up and hoped to any gods she might have believed in that Lydia would pull through herself.

And that’s exactly what she did.

Over and over and over again, that was what she did.

That was, until a three-eyed man drilled a hole into her head and broke the dam she’d built up for years. Just like that, every horror Lydia had ever known came flooding back to drown her.  

 

_II._

Lydia counted their steps as she and Stiles hobbled down the dismal halls of Eichen House. It was the only thing worth concentrating on when everything around them was filled with the angry shouts of those trying to kill them and the chaotic sounds of werewolves and chimeras tearing each other apart. She could still feel the charge of electricity in the air from the healing bodies – her _friends_ – tazed and beaten as they screamed and screamed and screamed.

Lydia would have done anything to be able to help them, but her powers were so unstable that she couldn’t even truly know if they were there at all. They came in blurs of noise and grief, and disappeared without a trace, besides her lingering exhaustion.

And that wasn’t the plan, anyways. The plan was that the two people without super-healing get the hell out of Eichen while the rest of the pack takes the painful collateral.

So she counted steps, and she estimated – 24 until they round the corner to the next gate – and she counted again, and she ignored the frantic beating of her heart and the useless dragging of her limbs.

Stiles shuttered under her as the sound of Scott’s anguished roar echoed through the halls behind them. She wrapped her arm tighter around him, for the both of them.

“We’re getting you out of here,” Stiles whispered, maybe more to himself than to her, as he hoisted her body up against him and charged faster down the hall toward the next gate. Her entire body felt stiff and clouded with the residual electricity that had been pumped into her earlier through the wires stuck to her head, jolting her mind across plains of consciousness she never wanted to visit again.

(Valack had been quickly tied down into her brain next to Peter and a certain trickster fox, still free to cut capers in her nightmares no matter how hard she tried to forget.)

“They’ll make it,” Stiles said. He moved faster.

“They always make it,” Lydia said softly, and Stiles rubbed a hand vigorously over her shoulder as if rubbing warmth into her, and thanking her silently.

They rounded a corner, and were met with a flash of blue scrubs and batons before Lydia’s wounded head was slammed back into a wall.

As an eruption of stars burst across her vision in time with the blossoming agony in her skull, Stiles’ scream hit her as if it was rising above raging tides.

“LYDIA!”

Her name was almost unfamiliar through the pain, but his voice pulled her through the grain of her eyes and the ring of her ears until she was looking at him, restrained by two orderlies as a third hovered over him. She felt the breath in her ear as another pinned her against a wall by her throat.

She couldn’t struggle. But Stiles wouldn’t stay still.

“LYDIA!” he screamed again, but it was cut short as the third orderly sent a vicious punch to his stomach, and he hunched over with a grunt, the other two gripping his arms harder as he moaned.

Another punch to his stomach sent Lydia’s head reeling again.

“Alright, hold on,” said one of the two orderlies restraining him. He looked uncertain, almost frightened. “Maybe we should just take them to the closed unit”-

The third orderly shook his head and lifted Stiles’ face to the light with a pull of his hair. “Nah. Not a chance. This is the one that gave Brunski a hard time last time he was locked up. And this one?”

He turned to jab a finger toward Lydia. “This is the one that got him killed.”

Lydia’s head lolled, but she picked it back up again, blinking away an onslaught of stars. She croaked, “Let him go. Please.”

Stiles picked his head up from where it was bowed, gazing at her with an agonized look that only seemed to get worse the longer he looked at her. She must have looked on the edge of death.

“Lydia,” he started, as if to warn her, but the third orderly whipped around again and punched him across the jaw before crouching before him menacingly.

"Not a word, kid,” he spat.

Stiles set his jaw, glaring into the orderly’s eyes. “ _Fuck you._ ”

Lydia saw a ripple travel up the man’s arms before he punched Stiles in the stomach once again, and his eyes were torn from hers as he crumpled in on himself.

And then the man punched him again, winding him.

Stiles’ arms were yanked further behind him as he dove forward, gasping.

The orderly punched him again, and then once more, his hand now pushing down on Stiles’ back for leverage.

Something was happening to Lydia, then.

She couldn’t struggle, what with the exhaustion rotting her bones and the thick arm pinning her throat, and yet all the same, she felt herself getting stronger with every punch. A viscous, throbbing energy was clawing up her insides toward her throat, and she shook with the desperation and the _anger_ seeming to fill her up like a polar poison, tightening around her every muscle. 

She watched, hands curling to fists as the orderly sent an uppercut into Stiles’ side, and a gruesome crack echoed through their little corner of Eichen. Lydia’s skin erupted into horrified goosebumps as the world slowed.

Her eyes locked on to the glaze setting over Stiles’ eyes as his head fell backwards, the small specks of blood spraying over his lips as a breath escaped him. His shoulders sagged between the orderlies, defeat seeming to wrap its arms around Stiles as she watched.

And then whatever had been rising in her escaped in the form of a scream, and her world in the asylum became a fragile and malleable place; her own to manipulate as her arms shot out before her, as her scream escaped her lips with the power of a freight train. The orderlies flew back, one by one across the hall like ragdolls, and Stiles crumpled to the floor without their hold to keep him upright. His hands moved to cover his ears.

Lydia kept screaming and screaming even when she didn’t have to, letting the energy escape her in a rush of sound and power, until it cut off with a ringing silence, and the sounds of war and bloodshed and hatred that had been plaguing them through the halls ceased altogether.

Lydia’s muscles vanished from her body, and she fell to the floor like an accordion, folding in on herself and coming to rest with a cheek pressed to the floor and her eyes peering into Stiles’, who was dragging himself toward her in a sluggish slow motion.

Footsteps were hurrying toward them both. Voices she recognized surrounded them like a gush of warm air in a cold, dark place.

Stiles was mouthing her name through crimson-stained lips, a hand wrapped around his ribs as the other helped to drag himself across the floor to her.

The last thing she thought before she let the darkness take her was a wish, while Stiles’ hand stretched out across the floor to her, that she could have taken it in her own and never let it go again.

 

_III._

Parrish was the one who got her out, but Parrish wasn’t the one she was looking at as her body lied limply in his arms, the victim of too many horrible crimes. Her limbs swung like ropes in a breeze, useless to her, and her head wound smeared blood on the deputy’s ashen arm.

She was looking at Scott, just feet ahead of them, supporting Stiles. She was looking at his shoulder blades protruding against his shirt and shifting slowly, rhythmically, as he helped his friend down the stone steps of Eichen House. They reminded her, hazily, of wings batting against a chrysalis, fighting to be freed.

He worked so hard for them all. He labored to keep them safe as if he couldn’t breathe standing still. He was the very sinews of their pack, keeping them strong and bonded and alive. He was their warrior – their _Alpha_ – and she loved him in a way she could never describe.

She was looking at Scott as he helped Stiles gingerly into the backseat of the Jeep and placed a hand on his knee for a moment’s worth of comfort. She was looking at Scott as he pressed his lips against the top of Kira’s head for a moment too long, and as he brushed his hand down Malia’s arm in thanks and they exchanged warm, appreciative smiles as she and Kira took off on Scott’s motorcycle, which he'd taught them how to drive.

She was paralyzed, looking at Scott, as he moved to her and Parrish, his features worn but his eyes still achingly warm, and took her motionless body into his own sturdy arms. His hands curled around her shoulder and her waist firmly and with a sincere reassurance that built a lump up in her throat.

“You’re okay now, Lydia,” she heard him murmur.

And though her mind sparked with fear for the future, and the voice in her head still whispered, _it’s not over, it’s never over,_ she still couldn’t help but to believe him.

 

_IV._

There was something about being _touched._

Since Lydia entered high school, she’d been craving touch as if it were the ghost of someone she’d lost. She’d go through the motions of high school, taking advantage of the stares and the pheromones and the lingering smell of lustful adolescence that hung in the halls of Beacon Hills High. She’d search for what was as acceptably close to a _man_ as she could find in high school and she’d let him touch her so boldly, so passionately, that sometimes the raw feeling of her skin would last for days.

But they would always fade.

The touches, as much as they made her feel wanted and alive and exhilaratingly _human_ , would never leave a lasting impression, and Lydia would soon begin to feel cold again. She’d ache for contact. She’d feel holes opening up inside of her, as if the transient skin of another had been the sutures holding them together.

This changed with Stiles.  

Maybe – and Lydia can’t pinpoint the exact moment when, or why - there was something silent that was born between them that wove their touches into something artless but urgent, as if without them they would lose themselves in one of the many storms that snuck up on them. It was this that caused Lydia to be wrapped in his arms on numerous occasions, as if there were a place carved out in his chest just for her, and filling it kept him warm, and filling it kept them safe. 

Just like that, it was Stiles, who had gone from an undetectable blip on her radar, to the touch she’d been aching for for years – a touch that would last. The one touch that did more to her insides than it did to her skin.

And now he held her in the backseat of his Jeep with a hand wrapped around her wrist and another combing through her hair as if it were rare silk, and a single pull could turn it to dust, and yet with each gentle stroke, there was enough pressure from his hand against her head to settle her heart.

“She’s getting worse,” Stiles was saying, a tremor in his voice. “Scott, drive fast. Like, Grand Theft Auto fast.” 

In response, the Jeep growled beneath them, picking up speed. Stiles looked down at her and she nuzzled her face into the crook of his arm, feeling her thoughts muddling as the blood still seeped from the hole in her head.

Stiles wasn’t doing a very good job at hiding his grimace. She rolled her head to look at him better.

“Stiles, I’m okay,” she said, but the sound of her voice proved the opposite. It was haggard and weak, torn from her screams and slurred from her exhaustion.

The hand on her wrist began absent mindedly rubbing up and down, and Stiles swallowed thickly before nodding.  

“You were amazing in there, you know that?” he said.

Lydia blinked sluggishly, attempting a smile. “Imagine how impressive it would’ve been if I was wearing my own shoes?”

Stiles laughed breathily. Lydia couldn’t say she didn’t miss her kitten heels after going bare foot for the past few weeks.

(Or was it days? Or was it months? Between coming face to face with Theo in the woods and fainting from the anguish of a drill through her skull, time had slipped away from her.)

He grimaced, the hand on Lydia’s hair moving to clutch at his ribs.

Shortly after this, Lydia felt a sense of calm take her, except it felt too cold and too unfamiliar to be comfortable. She felt herself tilting and swaying slightly, though she was lying very still and numb in Stiles’ lap. Though she could see Stiles, and she could feel him there with her, part of her mind was fogging over with some alien sensation.

Her breathing slowed. There she was – both in the Jeep and just an impression in Lydia’s mind. She was the soft lifting of chestnut hair in a breeze. She was calloused fingers and rose petal lips. She was a dimpled smile. She was the sharp tang of silver and the hearty burst of pine.

She once stole an emerald sweater printed with black hearts from her best friend’s closet that smelt the very same way.

“I can feel Allison.” 

The colour of Stiles’ face became sickly in the moonlight. His voice was a croak. “What’d you say?”

Lydia’s voice was practically non-existent for how quiet it was now. “I can feel her here.”

“Lydia?” Stiles choked. He began shifting her on his lap, placing both hands on the sides of her face, but Lydia couldn’t focus her eyes anymore. The only sensation that rang true was the ache in her heart as she was met with ghosts of her best friend, hitting her from all sides. 

“Stay here with me, Lydia,” Stiles said. His voice was distant now.

Some selfish part of her wanted to take him with her, wherever she was going. There was a very unique kind of fear that gripped her heart when she imagined herself in a world without Stiles on the other end of a phone or a door or a near-death experience. There was an emptiness in his absence that she dared not explore.

But he couldn’t come with her this time, to where her body was taking her.

“Oh, God. Oh, God. Please don’t” -

Stiles’ eyes grew tearful and hysterical and he shouted something at Scott, and she wished that wasn’t the last thing she’d seen before she closed her eyes.

 

_S T I L E S_

_I._

On a Sunday, almost a month after Jennifer Blake’s death, Beacon Hills had a sunset like none Stiles had ever seen before. It wasn’t so much the orange wash of light settling over the beach like a haze, or the soft lapping of pink waters against ivory sands, but it was the way it seemed to take over a world that had caused them so much harm with a suffusion of beauty he often forgot could exist. That’s what really made it something for the books. 

Stiles was sitting furthest away from the shoreline, watching the sun melt over the horizon as he tried to push away looming anxieties. Isaac and Scott were wrestling to the sounds of Allison’s laughter in the shallowest water, just small, dim shadows in the bold setting sun. Lydia stood a little ways away from them, kicking water around with crossed arms.

He had admittedly been struggling with his darkness far more than both Scott and Allison as of late. He didn’t talk about it – mostly because it embarrassed him, but also because there was nothing to talk about. Nightmares, crippling anxiety, a heightened sense of panic and the constant feeling of being watched by something hulking in some dark corner? It wasn’t anything concerning, considering everything they’d seen.

So he stayed quiet. He stayed to himself – which Scott noticed, and Stiles understood, because he felt his own personality slipping and sliding in his head, turning him into the type of reserved, avoidant wallflower that he had once vowed never to become.

He was just frowning at a guy in a beach towel trying to burn an aluminum chair leg in an illegal bonfire when he spotted Lydia trudging through the sand toward him. She came to a stop at his feet, her legs still dripping with water, while the rest of her was wrapped in a translucent blue cover up. It reminded him of a certain moment on the floor of the boy’s locker room two weeks earlier.

Stiles felt heat rise in his cheeks. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck before Lydia said, out of nowhere, “Une pensée malade peut dévorer la chair du corps plus que la fièvre ou de la consummation.”

Stiles frowned up at her for a few beats, shielding his eyes from rays of light that were poking through Lydia’s hair, turning it a fiery orange.

He said, “Okay, I passed sophomore French with like a very generous C+ so”-

“A sick thought can devour the body’s flesh more than fever or consumption,” Lydia said, raising her brows at him with a tilt of her head.

Stiles thought about it for a second. “So?”

“ _So_ ,” Lydia said, rolling her eyes at him before sitting down on the sand next to him and wrapping herself tighter in her cover up. “Why are you letting yourself sit over here to wallow in self-pity by yourself?” 

He opened his mouth to protest but she raised a finger and said, “ _Ah_ – you’re clearly wallowing, Stiles. I’m just saying, if you wanted to go down that route, there are plenty of us who could use some pitying as well. Your best friend _was_ turned into a werewolf not long ago.”  

“And you had to say all that with a frankly terrifying inculpating expression and a line from Pepé Le Pew’s diary?”

Lydia’s glossed lips twitched into an amused smile. “It’s Guy de Maupassant.”

“Bless you,” Stiles said, and Lydia made a tutting noise before looking back out to the sea, shaking her head.  

He stole a glance at her. He thought, selfishly, of how Lydia’s newfound vulnerability suited her so beautifully. He’d always had a feeling around her, as if there were something inside of her struggling to surface. She kept it buried for so long that it finally took the steady piling of bodies and the mounting fear that came with being a banshee to strip down her walls.

It seemed the thing she’d kept hidden was the sadness he saw pooling in her eyes all too often these days. He hated how little she smiled – they all struggled with any semblance of normality, especially since Lydia had discovered her supernatural side and he, Scott and Allison had been resurrected from the throes of ice water.

That was when things reached a very different, deeper level of hell.

And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to wish things were the way they used to be, because at least the smile she wore now, however rare it was, was real and true and achingly _Lydia._ There was simply no trace of the dumbed down girl she used to be, as if that girl had been taken to London with the jock-turned-werewolf that only helped to keep her trapped in a lie.  

No, this Lydia was one he had to get to know all over again. Since she laughed at his jokes now and his heart no longer cartwheeled every time she’d pass him by, he figured the both of them were better for everything that had happened to them.

 “Stiles,” she said, her voice soft and monotone. He turned to look at her. “Why haven’t you ever told me about your panic attacks?”

His heart skipped a beat. It was the first time she’d ever mentioned anything since the kiss, and half of him hoped she would simply forget about his episode.

(The other half hoped she wouldn’t, but it wasn’t the panic attack he’d wanted to talk about.)

Stiles shrugged. His skin itched uncomfortably. “Besides not having any time or opportunity due to the myriad of the hideous monsters in our town needing slaying?”

Lydia glared at him from beneath her lashes.

“Right, besides that,” he said, nodding. He turned his eyes to the ocean, swallowing. “Honestly, it’s just, understandably, not my favorite topic. And not one I need to be burdening anybody else with either. And they’re not even that bad anymore”-

He stopped himself when he felt his throat beginning to close up slightly and his heart speeding up against his ribs. He knew there was a reason he really _didn’t_ like to talk about this.

He grabbed the back of his neck. “It’s not important.”

Lydia was quiet. She shook her head.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she said, bowing her cheek against her knees and looking up at him with pursed lips. “But, there are worse qualities.”

“Oh, thank you,” Stiles said, his eyebrows jumping as he smiled at her.

She breathed a laugh, running her hands through the sand idly.

The sun was becoming far less appealing now than it was moments before, when it was all he could do to peel his eyes away from the colors, and yet he realized the color looked far more breathtaking shining off of Lydia’s hair anyways.

He swallowed thickly.

“Well, if you ever do feel like telling the truth,” Lydia said, her lips lingering around the word, “Then I’m still here.” 

He looked at her. She was sucking on her bottom lip, her soft gaze lingering on his face, and for a moment he was too overwhelmed to say anything at all.

“Yeah,” he croaked. He cleared his throat. “And I mean, if being a harbinger of death ever gets too much for you, I’m a good shoulder too.”

She grinned, tilting her head from side to side. “Thanks, Stiles.”

He laid a palm on the nape of her neck, the two of them looking out to the water in silence for a moment.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Stiles said. “I mean, ever. I’m fine.”

Lydia shook her head, pouting her lips. “Oh, I’m not worried. To be honest, I just came over here so I could get away from Isaac’s horrible seduction techniques. Allison looked genuinely horrified – in a cute way.”

“Right,” Stiles said, shrugging. He dropped his hand from her back. “So you decided to rudely interrupt me in a different language instead.”

She snapped her gaze toward him, narrowing her eyes. “Interrupting your _what_ exactly?”

Stiles’ frowned in thought. “Just my painful wallowing. And watching Isaac’s horrible seduction techniques from afar.”

Lydia grinned. Silence followed as they watched the sun sink into the water, disappearing from view but for a mottling of oranges and pinks against the dimming sky.

“Thank you,” he said suddenly, turning to her. She furrowed her brow.

He continued, “Just, for asking. And for everything.” 

She nodded.

He was sure, then, that while Scott, Isaac and Allison began heading back up the sand toward them, that their conversation was over for the night.

Then, with her eyes pointed to the sea and her hand reaching out in the sand to cover his own, Lydia said, “You mean something, Stiles. Stop pretending like you don’t, and I won’t need to worry.”

With that, she got up from beside him without another look and went to meet Allison halfway, linking arms with her best friend.

Little did he know, it was that very night that he would dream of her in his bed for the last time in a long time, and wake up screaming at her absence – and the emergence of something else entirely.

 

_II._

Stiles would take anything over this. He’d take the trickster fox, or two. He’d take Kanima venom, the bite of a werewolf and a Threefold Death.  He’d take Eichen House, and torture, and beatings among beatings, before he’d ever go through this again.

The pain of his fractured rib and cut lip was almost insulting, compared to what he was going through now.

Lydia was laid out on Deaton’s table like a lab experiment gone wrong. The vet insisted they bring her to him and not a hospital, because apparently a hole drilled into a banshee’s head required attention and care that an ordinary nurse could not provide.

Her head was cleanly patched up by the vet, but her skin was pallid and shining, and she looked too small in her Eichen House robes.

Lydia was balancing on the edge of life and death, and Stiles could only hope and pray that his hand on hers and his desperate words and his _begging_ could do something, anything, to help bring her back.

This wasn’t something he could tolerate. In fact, he felt quite literally like something was eating him alive, and it _hurt._ More than anything he could have ever imagined.

“Stiles. Here,” Scott said, and a water bottle appeared next to his head.

Stiles was sitting under a single fluorescent light that was lighting the table Lydia was laying on, while rain pattered softly against the windows outside. He thought he was the last one of them left for the night – he offered to take every night shift, refusing everyone else’s insistence that he leave, because sleep was an impossible thing for him now anyways and he wasn’t leaving her like this again.

Never again.

Stiles took the water bottle numbly and placed it on the floor next to him, returning his gaze to Lydia’s colorless face.

Scott sighed behind him, rubbing Stiles’ shoulder. “How’re you holding up?”

Stiles just shook his head, leaning back in his chair. He let go of Lydia’s hand for the first time in hours and ignored the cramps stiffening his fingers and the ache rippling through his back.

He dragged a hand over his face, letting out a breath. “I can’t explain this.”

The hand on his shoulder disappeared, and Scott pulled up a chair next to him, leaning his forearms on his knees. He looked at Lydia ruefully, before turning to Stiles with concern in his eyes.

“It’s been two days, man. She’s still here. She’s still fighting,” Scott said.

“Yeah, but she’s not awake. She’s not – I just” –

He cut himself off with a frustrated noise, placing a shaking hand on his brow. He spoke slowly, stiffly, “I don’t understand why any of this happened. It doesn’t make a single inkling of fucking sense to me.”

Scott was silent for a minute. Stiles could hear the gears turning in his head, trying to figure it out, because that was what Scott did. Scott didn’t chalk things up to bad luck and senseless violence and people who deserved to die. Scott always found a reason – a naïve, overly-optimistic reason for the terrible things that happened to him and everyone he loved.

Stiles should hate him for it, but instead he always found himself admiring his every word, wishing his mind could work the way his best friend’s did, where everything was all lights at the ends of tunnels and small windows on the walls of dark, crowded rooms.

In Stiles’ mind, the tunnels never ended, and the rooms shrunk with every breath.

“You got possessed by the Nogitsune, because the Nogitsune needed a host to survive,” Scott said. “And me – I got bit by a werewolf who wanted a pack. We’re not deserving of any of it, Stiles. God, I mean, it really sucks, all of it. I know that. But the fact is that Lydia is a banshee, and people out there want that kind of power for themselves. They want to use it – and that’s why this happened. This happened not because of the people we are but because of the things we can offer.”

Stiles looked to him, his jaw tight. Scott swallowed, a crease forming between his brow as he leaned closer to his best friend. “I’m not saying it’s right, or fair. But I’m saying that we can’t just sit here holding grudges and wondering _why,_ when we’re just going to reach the same simple, depressing answer every time, and we’re never going to be able to understand it. We just have to learn to come through it, and get stronger. Together.”

Stiles looked back to Lydia, feeling his throat burn. He said, softly, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly,” Scott said. “That’s good.”

Stiles smiled wryly at his friend. “Winston Churchill. Or, Mrs. Morrell. You choose.”

Scott breathed a laugh.

Silently, Scott reached out and moved a stray hair away from Lydia’s lips. He looked almost guilty, as if even through the speech he just relayed to Stiles, he still blamed himself as the Alpha of their pack.

But Stiles blamed himself. As much as he wanted to destroy Valack – and he would, confidently, with his bare hands if he had the chance – he couldn’t bring himself to dwell on what the man did, when it was so painfully clear to Stiles that if he had worked to get Lydia out in time, she would be here. She would be healthy – or healthier, in the least – and awake and 100%, undoubtedly _alive._

Now she had to fight for herself, and Stiles never wanted that for her.

He never wanted to get to a point where he would let this happen to her when he knew, first-hand, what kinds of things happened in a place like Eichen House.

He was filled with boiling hatred, but it wasn’t directed at anyone else but himself.

“No one can ever come close to her, you know?” Stiles said softly. “She’s just…”

“She’s Lydia,” Scott said, a sad smile on his lips.

Something about it made Stiles break inside. He felt his eyes burning, filling up with tears quicker than he thought possible.

He looked at her, and his heart ached so prominently he couldn’t imagine how it wasn’t afflicted with some terminal disease, slowly clawing itself up to a raw pulp in his chest. 

He took a trembling breath, leaning back in his chair with fisted hands.

Scott stared at him sadly as he shook his head, his bottom lip trembling. 

“I can’t lose her,” he whispered, and if Scott wasn’t a werewolf, he might not have been able to make out the words. They were mangled and diced from his shaking breaths, hardly a sentence as much as it was a whimper.   

“You won’t,” Scott insisted. He placed a strong, sturdy hand on Stiles’ shoulder and squeezed. “Stiles, we’re not losing her. Wherever she is – she’ll find her way back.”  

Stiles reached out and took Lydia’s hand in his, bringing it to his lips in desperation. A tear fell over his cheek onto her hand, snaking its way down her wrist. He took a shaky breath.

“God, I can’t”-

He pressed her hand against his forehead for a moment before placing it back down on the table. He tried to convey everything to Scott without words, because he couldn’t bring himself to speak now, and he needed Scott to know. It felt so urgent, he needed someone to _know_ – that it was different now, that _they_ were different now, and that he still loved her. He loved her, he loved her, he loved her. Nothing else mattered.

“I know, Stiles,” Scott said, and he gazed down at Lydia, and he looked peaceful for a moment, as if she was telling him something comforting.

And then, with a nod of assurance, he said, “She knows.”

 

_III._

Stiles worked on his French.

It wasn’t that he particularly needed or liked the subject – the language was complicated and it had rules that gave him headaches and everything had to be pronounced with an abrasive _r_ sound that just didn’t sound right coming out of his throat.

But there was something about the way Lydia used it. She knew a lot of languages, and Stiles had heard her use all of them at least once before, but nothing sounded just like her French did. When she used it, it was an elegant, velvety melody, sounds intertwined together so tightly that every phrase sounded like one long, lyrical word.

So he tried to get the hang of it for an above average level instead of his consistent C+, simply because he wanted to be apart of that world. Maybe things like _The Beast_ and _Chimera_ and _Trepanation_ would sound a little less terrifying in French.

He was in the library (he’d just gotten used to be being back here without seeing flashes images of Donovan, blood dripping from his lips, a metal rod balancing from a gruesome wound in his chest), and had his head bowed over the papers splayed out before him covered in French grammar as the man speaking through his earphones sounded out basic French in a slow, soothing drawl.

“Je suis, tu es, il est, nous…nou-sums? Nous som. Noussum,” Stiles mumbled to himself, tapping his pen against the table’s edge.

He blinked, bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he was learning the simplest French terms in an actual classroom, so he was basically starting from scratch all over again.  

“Nuissance,” he said to the paper before him. “How ‘bout that?”

He checked his phone. It’d been two hours, and though he’d made little progress, he had to admit that the distraction had been bliss while it lasted.

Now, as the school was getting ready to close in the next few minutes, the jig was up and he was back to the harsh reality of things, including the fact that he’d agreed to meet his dad for an early dinner in order to _discuss_ Stiles’ _life_ and his _college plans_ and his _mental state_ and his relapsing _ADHD_ and his growing affinity for _schoolwork._

He’d agreed mostly so that his dad wouldn’t worry, until he realized a very quick second after that the whole ordeal might end up making him worry a little more, if he expected Stiles to tell the truth.

He was just gathering up his papers to go home when something caught his eye behind a bookshelf.

It was a flash of strawberry blonde hair.

He frowned. Lydia hadn’t been in school since she woke up a week ago, and she wasn’t expected to be back until at least another few days.

Yet, there she was, perusing through the Historical Fiction section, wearing a simply cut cream dress and a loose beige cardigan, her hair brushed heavily over one side. Stiles figured she was trying to cover her still bandaged wound, and of course Lydia managed to do it with remarkable grace and skill.

As he gaped at her, confused at her presence in the library after school, she watched as her gaze caught his between a pair of leather-bound tomes, and she immediately looked like a deer in headlights.

He stood up from his chair just as she came out of hiding with a guilty smile on her face, strolling toward him with a novel in hand. She was wearing flats.

“Stiles,” she said in greeting. She pursed her lips sheepishly.

“Lydia,” he breathed. She approached his table and set her book down on the floor, taking a seat before him though he was still standing. “Why are you here?”

Her eyes rolled upwards, and she motioned for him to sit down. He did as he was told.

“Nice to see you too,” she said quietly. She was leaning forward as if she didn’t want anybody else to hear her.

Stiles blinked. “Nice to see – Lydia, of course I’m glad to see you, I just – I meant, what are you doing here today? You’re supposed to be home. Healing. I didn’t even see you in class.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t in class. I came to get a book since I burned through all my other ones in a day.”

Stiles’ dipped his head to the side, his mouth falling open. “Of course you did.”

But Lydia’s attention was drawn to something else. He watched as she tilted her head, frowning down at his papers, and he was too late to snatch them away before she was turning them around and scanning the writing there.

She raised her brows at him. “You’re studying French?”

Stiles itched the back of his neck. “Yes. Well, no, not anymore, because I am unalterably terrible.”  

Lydia pushed out her bottom lip. “Why?”

“Knowledge. Learning. It’s what we originally came to school to do before it became a hunting ground for supernatural creatures everywhere,” Stiles said, flailing his arms around for a second before snatching his papers back from her and shoving them in his bag.

“You don’t have any French classes,” Lydia commented.

“It’s an after-school elective thing.”

“Mm-hm. And where are the rest of your classmates from this after-school elective thing?” Lydia asked, placing her chin in her hand with raised eyebrows.

Stiles gaped at her until her mock-curious expression sucked all of the life from him, and he deflated. He blew out a breath. “Okay, fine, yes. I’m teaching myself French because I need a distraction from this town, and this language is ridiculously hard, and you made it look so damn easy with your _Guy du Nipissing_ quote and your cute accent and the whole deal, so sue me. _Je suis imbécile._ ”

There was a bit of light pink rising to Lydia's cheeks. She pursed her lips, before whispering to him, "It's Guy de Maupassant." 

"It's _Guy-don't-care,_  that's who it is. What book did you come all the way here for anyways?” Stiles asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

Stiles’ attention was immediately peaked by the widening of Lydia's eyes. She immediately began to fumble, but Stiles was quicker. He dipped under the table as she moved to grab her book, and snatched he it up first, holding it away from her clawing hand with his mouth hanging open in amusement.

In his hand was a copy of Mitch Albom’s _Tuesdays with Morrie._

Stiles’ heart skipped a beat. His smile disappeared. Lydia became very still in his peripheral.

He was reminded of months before, just after he was possessed, and Allison was killed, and Stiles had been going over to her place more and more often for study session, and Lydia had been coming over to his when they’d both sense the other lying awake in their beds and needed a distraction in the form of a film, or a bottle of wine, or a long philosophical discussion that ended in sleeping on blanket piles and hard chairs and too-small couches.

It was on one of these days that Stiles told Lydia of his first favorite book. He’d read it during his Mom’s worst days, just as pieces of Stiles were slipping away from her memory, and he saw the unfamiliarity lingering in her eyes for longer each day he would visit her. The book was of a man recounting his final months with an old professor and friend, who was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“I was completely attached to it, because it was one of the few stories I’d read that actually saw some light in the process of dying,” Stiles had told her. She had been listening attentively to him on the edge of his bed, her hands in her lap, her eyes soft and sympathetic as she gazed up at him. “Like, even with this seriously terrible disease, this old man still found a way to change his friend’s life for the better, and he never got himself down even on the days when he could hardly move or speak. And so I tried to be like that. Even if I wasn’t the one dying”-

“You tried to stay strong for your Mom,” Lydia had finished for him.

And the very book he had told her about that day, in a rare moment of vulnerability that he had not forgotten – and he was sure, from the slightest change in the way she was around him since that day, that she hadn’t either - was the very book he now held in his hands.

Lydia was the first to speak.

“I, um,” she started, but he turned to look at her as she swallowed and started up again, her voice quiet. “You told me that it helped make you stronger.”

She swallowed thickly again, a dimple forming next to her mouth. Beneath the uncertainty, he thought he saw embarrassment in her gaze, before it quickly melted into something different - something _more_.

As he watched, a kind of _admiration_ built up in her eyes, and it reminded him of the kind of feeling that would often emerge in himself when he looked at her.

He’d never wanted to kiss her as much as he did then.

He placed the book back on the table, struggling to find something to say to her, to tell her how much this meant to him. “Lydia”-

“You don’t have to say anything,” she insisted. She pushed the hair behind her ear, and he saw a bit of her bandage peeking through the strands. She took the book in her hands, staring down at it with a soft smile. “I’ve been going crazy wanting to read it since you told me about it. There was just never any time. That’s maybe one good thing that has come out of this.”

She brushed her fingers over her wound as she said it.

“More time to yourself,” Stiles agreed.

“Yeah,” she said. She looked up at him then, and there was sincerity there, on her face, that touched his heart with blossoming warmth.

She said, “And more time to get to know you better.”

Stiles frowned. His voice was soft as he leaned closer to her across the table. “You don’t think you do? Know me?”

She shook her head with a small laugh. “Honestly, Stiles, if you had asked me before I went into Eichen House if I thought you would have gone to those lengths to save me…I would have said no. And not because I don’t believe you would do that kind of thing for your friends, but because I thought we weren’t…I thought we were drifting apart.”

For a moment, Stiles thought the Lydia he knew had been replaced with a stranger, for how far off she was. But it didn’t take long for him to see where she was coming from.

With Parrish teaching her to take care of herself – in a far better fashion than Stiles ever could, if he was being honest - and Malia entering his life in such a new way, and the new threats and the increasing danger to Lydia’s life, and Stiles’ own guilt over Donovan and his petty, cowardly feuds with the people he loved…Stiles had hardly seen Lydia, let alone talk to her like they used to.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because it was the only thing to say. “I’m sorry for leaving you in there. I, of all people, should've realized what goes on in that place.”

“You weren’t too late,” Lydia said. “And I’m not the only one you needed to worry about.”

Stiles shook his head. “But you should’ve been the first. Because when I thought you were gone for good…when you were lying on that table, and it could’ve gone either way – Lydia, I’ve never felt anything like that in my life. And honestly, if living ever meant going on without you, I’ve figured out the hard way that I can’t do it. I can’t fucking do it.”

Lydia’s eyes were wide now, searching back and forth across his face.

Stiles continued, taking her hand in his and resting them on top of her copy of _Tuesdays with Morrie._ “So I am - I'm sorry. And there’s nothing I’d rather do than get to know you. Again. Better, this time. Without near-death situations and without being intoxicated on your bedroom floor." 

Lydia breathed a laugh, shifting her hand to clutch his. She pressed her lips into a tight line, and then smiled at him. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Stiles agreed, nodding. He glanced back at his backpack. “But first I need to get to know Pépe Le Pew and his ancestors a little better.”

Lydia took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. She tilted her head with a smile, and he thought her eyes were glistening a little more than they were before. “Well, I just so happen to have a genius level IQ and a fluent understanding of the French language.”

“Well,” Stiles said, raising his brow. “I guess my day just got luckier.”

When Stiles texted his dad a few minutes later, the Sheriff very eagerly accepted to push their dinner date to next week.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments for cookies? xoxox 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for sticking through it with me, and I hope to be back with more soon. <3


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